Stay Awake

Kongsvinger Lutheran Church

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Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the Gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern

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Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.

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And now, here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg. The Holy Gospel according to St. Mark, chapter 13, verses 24 through 37.

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But in those days, following that distress, the sun will be darkened, the moon will not give its light, the stars will fall from the sky, the heavenly bodies will be shaken.

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At that time, men will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory.

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And He will send His angels and gather His elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens.

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Now learn this lesson from the fig tree. As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near.

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Even so, when you see these things happening, you know that it is near, right at the door.

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I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.

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No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven or the sun, but only the

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Father. Be on guard, be alert. You do not know when that time will come.

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It's like a man going away. He leaves his house and puts his servants in charge, each with his assigned task, and tells the one at the door to keep watch.

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Therefore, keep watch, because you do not know when the owner of the house will come back, whether in the evening or at midnight or when the rooster crows or at dawn.

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If he comes suddenly, do not let him find you sleeping. What I say to you, I say to everyone, watch.

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In the name of Jesus. Amen. All right. For those of you visiting today, you picked a doozer of a

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Sunday. It's the end of the world Sunday. This is the last Sunday of the church year, and historically the church has used the last part of the church year to look at the very end of the book to see what's coming.

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And so those of you who are not familiar with the Christian faith, this is a total spoiler alert.

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You're going to learn what the end of the story is all about. And I apologize for that, but it's just how the dice rolls.

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You know what I'm saying? So today we're going to be looking at Mark chapter 13. I'll be preaching from my own translation of the text, which is why it doesn't quite fit with the

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NIV. And we'll see if we can have a little bit of comfort along the way. Because by the way, talking about the end of the world causes a lot of anxiety for some people.

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It really does. But see, the reason why Jesus is telling us what's coming is so that we would not be caught unawares.

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So that we wouldn't be anxious. He's given us the inside scoop, if you know what I mean. We know what's coming.

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Here's what Jesus says. In those days, after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened, the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be out of the heaven falling, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.

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The Greek word there actually says, the powers of the heavens will be made to totter. What does all that mean?

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I don't know. It sounds really frightening. Kind of awesome. I'm sure it'll be on the news. Right? Right?

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But see, that's kind of the thing we have to keep in mind. Is that we, well, here at Kongsvinger, we have the privilege of having this congregation be around for a little bit of time.

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I think we just celebrated our 135 years. The charter of Kongsvinger was 135 years ago.

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Was it yesterday or the day before? Yeah. Okay. And so we have generations of Kongsvingerians.

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That's a word I've made up. And part of that generation, well, they're out there.

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Some of us are in here. And so we kind of get the security of going, well, as things have been, so they've continued to be.

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You know? Yeah, the technology's gotten a little bit better and the television program's a little more interesting. But for the most part, you know, things just keep plugging along.

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But see, the thing is, is that this creation is going to end. God's going to kill it.

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And then he's going to raise it again. Death and resurrection is the way God deals with sin. And so everything you see here, at some point in the future, it will not be.

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Even the sun and the moon, they're not permanent. I know the scientists like to tell you that those things have been around for a gazillion years.

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How do they figure the math out on that? I don't know. The math in the Bible comes up with a different number altogether.

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But we know this. As long as they've been, they're not permanent. They seem permanent, don't they?

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But they're not. Nothing here is permanent. Not even you. Oh, and keep this in mind. If you're not around for all of this, the day you die, that's the end of the world for you.

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So keep that in mind. There's like two plans here, plan A and plan B. Plan A is you crump, and then we put you out there, and then you wait for Jesus to return.

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Plan B is if Jesus is returning soon, then you'll be alive to see these things happen.

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And so don't panic when all this stuff starts going down. Does that make sense? So, the stars will be falling out of the heavens, the powers of the heavens will be shaken, they will be made to totter, and then they will see the

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Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and glory. Yeah, by the way, Jesus doesn't ever show up secretly.

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Yep. Jesus' return, everybody's going to see it, you're going to look up and go, ah, that's

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Jesus coming. Right? And when He comes, those who are not in the faith, who do not trust in Christ for the forgiveness of their sins, they are going to have the ultimate chill run down their spine because they know that they're guilty before God.

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They've sinned, just like you and I have sinned, but they have not heard or have not believed or refused to believe, which is even more foolish, the good news that Christ has bled and died for their sins.

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And rather than repent and be forgiven and pardoned, they have persisted in sin and unbelief, and then when

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Jesus shows up, quite unexpected, unawares, they had no idea He was coming back.

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When He shows up, they're going to, but for us, it's a little bit of a different response to this.

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All right. I hate to ask this question. How many of you have seen the movie The Polar Express?

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Okay. Okay. I'm in good company. I'm not going to be stoned for making a reference to this movie because Jesus isn't mentioned once in The Polar Express, but it's a fascinating Christmas story.

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In the scene in there, the story of The Polar Express is a story of a kid who's kind of at that age where either

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Santa Claus exists or he doesn't exist, right? He's checking his encyclopedia and the scientific facts just don't make any sense because like living at the

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North Pole, nothing grows there, no one lives there, and so he's thinking that this whole Santa Claus thing has been, well, some kind of wool pulled over his eyes.

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So he's at that critical moment, and then what happens is this magical train shows up outside of his door on Christmas Eve and takes him to, well, of all places, the

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North Pole, and what happens there is that he is there when

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Santa makes his grand appearance on Christmas Eve. He's getting ready to get into his sleigh and head off to do his business, right?

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And so the pivotal moment, he's there and you can just feel the energy, all the elves are freaking out, they're getting ready to party, and open the door and you can see the shadow of Santa and pandemonium breaks out, right?

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This is what it's going to be like for us because when we see the sign of Christ is appearing in the heavens, something exciting has happened, we're finally going to see his face.

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What does he look like? How tall is he? Right? You're going to see the kindness in his eyes, you'll see the nail marks in his hands and in his feet, those tokens of your salvation that he won for you, right?

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And we're going to be straining and enjoy knowing that now the end has come. No more sin, no more pain, no more suffering, no more death, no more sickness, world without end, huzzah,

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Christmas forever, right? And see, that's the thing.

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You're either in Christ and you're looking forward to his return or you are in your sin thinking that you can somehow skate through the day of judgment.

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Well maybe I'll try to do some good works as I get closer to the end of my life.

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You think of Bill Cosby's joke about his parents, how they would treat his children, you know, with kindness and all this kind of stuff, and he would say, that was not my dad when

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I grew up. He's old now and he's trying to get into heaven, right?

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But I must warn you, there is no amount of good works that you can do to earn your salvation.

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There is no amount. It doesn't matter if you go and sell everything you have right now and give it to the poor and dedicate every living hour and breath that you have left of your life to doing good.

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You will not. You will not, by any stretch of the imagination, even come close to paying the debt that you owe because of your sin.

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Well you can say, well how then can I be saved? Stop trying to earn it. You will never earn it.

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God has done something amazing, and the amazing thing that he has done is that God has become one of us.

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Christ is God of God, light of light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, and he was born of the

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Virgin Mary, and he has lived perfectly the law of God for you.

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And because he has taken upon himself your sin, your shame, your guilt, and the debt that you owe

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God, you now have the ability to be forgiven.

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And salvation, according to Christ, is a gift, it's a gift.

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There's nothing that you can do to earn it, nothing. Receive the gift, be forgiven, be pardoned, repent of your wickedness, trust in the forgiveness of sins, and then when this day shows up, you will be very excited as opposed to much in distress.

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Remember what our sermon hymn said about those who pierced Christ, deeply wailing, deeply wailing, right?

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And those who pierced Christ, who nailed him to the cross, they will see him, and they will, well, because God's going to raise them from the dead.

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We continue. So then you will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and glory, and then he will send the angels and he will gather the chosen of him from the four winds, from the end of the earth to the end of heaven.

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Angels are going to pick you up and bring you to Christ. But from the fig tree learn the parable.

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When the branch has already become tender and put forth leaves, you know that summer is near.

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So also, whenever you might see these things taking place, you know that he is near, that he is at the very gates.

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Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. Now, there are two major bits of confusion in what

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I just read. Let's straighten this out. Number one, you may have heard that the fig tree in this text refers to the nation state of Israel.

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And that when the nation state of Israel is established, that generation, or reestablished, that generation will not pass away until Christ returns.

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That is not what this text is saying. The fig tree is not Israel. So those who are saying that Jesus is eminent return, it's got to be like now, because Israel was reestablished in 1948, they are not rightly handling

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God's word. Jesus wasn't making any reference to the reestablishing of the nation state of Israel.

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So let's get this straight. Jesus could take two, three hundred, a thousand, two thousand, four thousand years to return.

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The generation that was alive in 1948 is not the last generation. That's not what this text is saying.

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Jesus is instead using a parable, a parable, if you would, basically pointing to something that they all know.

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Fig trees apparently, like our trees around here, lose their leaves in the wintertime or in the fall.

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And then, we all know how it goes in the wintertime. If you look at the trees outside of my window in my office, they all look pretty darn dead.

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Sticks. Okay, it's an amazing thing. And then, we all know what happens as we get into March, getting close to April, although around here, it's a lot later than when

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I was in Indiana. Just saying, okay. I want to know where my global warming is.

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I want to be able to plant a palm tree up here, but anyway, that's a different story, too. But the idea is, is that we all know what happens, is that as the weather starts to warm up, we look at those branches on the tree, and they start to look like there's some kind of little bit of growth, little bit of buds.

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And then, all of a sudden, blammo, life. I mean, it seems to happen overnight. I mean, these trees, like, explode to life.

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So the idea is, is that you know that summer is near when you see that happening, right? Sit there and go, summer, it's time to plant, it's time to, you know, all you farmers, you start calculating what you got to do, right, in the long days ahead.

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So that's the idea. This is not a prophecy about the nation -state of Israel. It's just a parable that says this.

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When you see these things happening, then you know that I am near. I'm at the very gate,

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Jesus is saying, and that's what he's saying. The other thing is, is that if you've ever run across a wascally atheist who knows his

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Bible, or at least thinks he knows his Bible, he'll point to this text and says, it says here that this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.

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And so Jesus was telling the people there that were listening to him that he was going to return in their lifetime. And wrong, you don't know, you don't know how to read

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Greek, do you? OK, the question is, which generation is Jesus talking about?

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The generation that's listening to him or the generation that sees these things start to take place, sees the branch sprout new life and knows that summer is near?

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The answer is it's the second one. And that's the referent. So Jesus is not saying that the disciples will not pass away until he returns.

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Jesus is first and second coming in their lifetime. No, he's saying that the generation who sees these signs to be fulfilled, they will not pass away.

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So there is a generation coming when you start to see the signs. For real hard labor, what we talked about last week, that generation will not pass away until these things are fulfilled.

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Now, that being the case, has the sun, moon and the stars done their thing?

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Have the heavens been shaken to the point where they're tottering? Do we see the sign of the son of man appearing in heaven?

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Answer new. Therefore, we don't know if we're this generation or not. We could be.

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And here's the best part, Christians since the beginning have all thought they were the last generation, they have all done it.

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You read the church fathers were the last generation. We're toast. Right. Yeah. OK. And I look at us and I look at what's happening in the world.

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I look what's happening in the church and I say, oh, we're the last generation. We're toast. It's over. And you know what's going to happen if the

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Lord carries the next generation is going to say the same thing. And so the idea here is, is that Jesus and remember his words.

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Watch. Right. Actually, it's better translated. Stay awake. Jesus wants us to live in this tension.

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He wants us to live in this tension, to live our lives in anticipation of his return, not knowing when it's going to be living like it could be today.

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And yet at the same time, living our lives as if, well, it may not be for a while. Keeps us on our toes, makes it so we don't become like, could you imagine the mischief that we would get involved in as a church if we knew that Jesus was returning on March 14th in the year 2111.

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What would we do if we knew that? I don't know. I mean, it would probably be a real mess since we don't know.

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Well, let's keep living like it could be today because it could be. So I say this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.

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And heaven and earth will pass away. There it is again. This is all coming to an end. But my words will not pass away.

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Now, concerning that day or the hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, not even the son, but only the father.

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In other words, the herald campings of the world when they come around and they continue to come around telling you that we we figured it out.

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And here's how they get around this. Well, it says here that we can't know the day or hour. It doesn't say we can't know the month or week straining out a net and swallowing a camel.

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Good night. OK, the point that Jesus is making is nobody knows. And so the person who says,

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I've cracked the code, I've taken all of the words of the book of Revelation in the Greek, put them into my computer and started doing some calculations.

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And I know that Jesus is returning on the fifth blood moon. You know this with certainty, that person's lying to you,

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OK? And it might be that they're just not right in the head. That may be a possibility, OK?

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Because I've noticed that those people who overcook their minds on trying to crack eschatological codes end up having their minds cracked.

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And this is what happened to poor Harold Camping. He predicted the end of the world how many times before he gave up and then died.

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Right. So anybody who says the tribulation begins next

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March, get ready, buy prepper food, start buying spam. I hate spam.

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OK, don't listen to them. Listen to Jesus. Nobody knows when he's coming back.

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And anybody who says that they do know they're selling you something. Most likely, they're selling you their book.

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Ninety five, I'll give you a book when you can tell when the world is coming to an end. Yeah, I'm sorry.

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That's pretty expensive toilet paper. But anyway, Jesus says nobody knows.

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He says this instead, be watching, be alert and be alert. Here means to be vigilant in where I'm being aware of a threatening peril to be alert.

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It's like a guy who's on duty in the army behind enemy lines.

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You got to be vigilant. You don't know when the enemy is going to attack. That's the idea. You don't know the time,

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Jesus says. It's like a man who goes on a journey, leaves his home and gives his servant the authority each to do his work.

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And he commands the porter, stay awake. In other words, I could come back at night.

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Don't be falling asleep. So therefore, Jesus says, stay awake. You don't know when the

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Lord of the house is coming, whether it's evening or midnight or the rooster crowing or in the early morning.

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You don't know if it's next Thursday at nine o 'clock. You don't know if it's next year in November.

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You don't know. So stay awake. And here's what he says.

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OK, so that having coming suddenly, he may not find you sleeping. You don't want

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Jesus to find you sleeping. And so what Jesus says, what I say to you, I say to everyone, keep watching, stay awake.

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Now, the obvious question is, well, then how do I stay awake? All right. Jesus is pretty emphatic about this.

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He doesn't want you falling asleep. Well, it's real simple. You ready? In the words of that song from the great theologians from the band

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Journey. Don't stop believing. It's just that simple.

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Keep coming to church. Keep hearing that your sins are forgiven on the Sundays when we have the

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Lord's supper and you hear these words, take eat. This is the body of Christ broken for you.

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Take drink. This is the true blood of Christ shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins.

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Keep believing. When you hear me say I as a called servant of the word, forgive you all of your sins.

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Believe, believe. That's what it means to stay awake because salvation is by grace through faith alone, not by works.

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You sit there and go, why are you saying we shouldn't do works? Ufta. No, I'm not saying that. OK, but doing good works is not how you stay awake.

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We don't do good works in order to stay awake. We do good works because we is awake. OK, bad grammar on purpose.

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It helps. OK. You're all looking at me like, you know, what's wrong with this guy? All right. In other words, we

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Christians do good works because we is Christians, not because we want to be them. If you hope someday to be a

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Christian, then you're not. But if you believe that Christ has bled and died for you, believe what happened to you in that font, that Christ washed away your sins, that you were buried with Christ, that you were raised with Christ, that he feeds you and sustains you with his body and blood, receive and believe the forgiveness of sins, then you can't help but do good works.

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How could you not? OK, how many of you know of apple trees?

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Well, they want to be the trees that want to be apple trees. But so they're going out trying to make apples in order to become an apple tree.

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No, I know that doesn't work that way. You know what apple trees do? They make apples, right?

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Ours, I like to say cows, moo dogs, woof. All right.

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They do. Cats meow and Christians do good works because you is one.

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Right. So here's the idea. Stay awake. Continue to believe. Trust in Christ.

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All right. And this trust is so confident and so certain that if the

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Lord should choose to test your faith on the last day, Martin Luther actually gave some really good advice.

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And I read it earlier this week. And here's what he says. If you appear before the throne of God and Jesus says to you, well,

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I'm sorry, off to hell with you. All right. If Jesus says this to you, then you are to stand your ground and say absolutely not.

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You cannot send me to hell because if you send me to hell, you're a liar. You told me

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I was forgiven. You told me that salvation is by grace through faith. You told me that I was receiving your body and blood for the forgiveness of my sins and that when

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I was baptized, I was baptized into your death and into your resurrection. I believed what you said.

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You can't send me to hell. If you do, you are a liar. Could you imagine saying that to Jesus?

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Right. But be that confident. Because his promises are that sure, should he choose to test your faith on that last day, you stand your ground and say you promised.

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And you know what he'll say? You're right. I did. He never lies.

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So what does it look like to stay awake? I think Jude helps us out here. Our text from Jude, let's revisit it and we'll end with these thoughts.

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Beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit that you do these things, beloved, as because we are

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Christians, because we are in Christ, because we confidently believe that we are forgiven and redeemed. We continue to build ourselves up in our most holy faith, coming to church, hearing his word, receiving his body and blood, trusting in the promises and also praying in the

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Holy Spirit. We as Christians, we pray. We don't decree and declare, we pray.

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We humbly ask God to meet our needs, to give us our daily bread, to lead us not into temptation.

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And we also pray for those who are in need as well. Humbly asking God to meet their needs, to strengthen people and to step in and do justice for those who are oppressed.

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Keep yourselves in the love of God. And you do that by trusting and coming here, waiting for the mercy of our

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Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. Now, listen to what Jude says. What are we waiting for as Christians?

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Jude doesn't say, hey, we're waiting for God's wrath to show up. I hope you make it. No. Jude says we are waiting for the mercy of our

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Lord Jesus Christ. That's what we're waiting for. When Jesus shows up, we will receive and we will see that mercy.

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So have mercy on those who doubt. That's right. How many of you have ever struggled with those those doubts?

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Those doubts take on all kinds of different forms. Can I truly be forgiven? Am I really a

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Christian? What if I haven't done enough? Right. We come across these doubts.

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And so when you see somebody struggling with them, those doubts, you have mercy on them and you point them back to Jesus.

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Save others by snatching them out of the fire. Yeah, there are those who have done the foolish thing.

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They've gone from the frying pan into the fire. They've stopped believing. So we go out and snatch others, we do good works because we is

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Christians, right? To others, show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh.

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But now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling, that would be Jesus and him who is able to present you blameless before the presence of his glory.

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That's Jesus. He's the one who's presenting you as blameless. And you sit there and go, but I'm not. But you are.

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Your sin doesn't belong to you anymore. I'm sorry. I hate to break this to you, but all of those sins that you've committed, all of those sins that you will commit, they were put on Christ.

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They're bled for their died for. They don't belong to you. They belong to him. And he's taken care of them.

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He's dispatched them. So he instead is going to give you mercy and he's going to present you before the throne of God, blameless, perfectly righteous, shining as the sun, as a gift.

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So to the only God, our savior through Jesus Christ, our Lord be glory, majesty, dominion, authority before all time now and forever, as the

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Greek says, from the ages into the ages. Amen. In the name of Jesus.

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Amen. If you would like to support the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, you can do so by sending a tax -free donation to Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, 15950, 470th

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Avenue, Northwest, Oslo, Minnesota, 56744. And again, that address is

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Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, 15950, 470th

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Avenue, Northwest, Oslo, Minnesota, 56744. We thank you for your support.

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